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ANNUAL SERMON 



THE BOARD OF MISSIONS, 
1839. 

BY JOHN S. STONE, D. D. 

RT.CTOK OF ST, PAUL'S CHURCH, BOSTON 



THE 

BEARINGS OF MODERN COMMERCE 



ON THE 



progress of J&otrmi ffliiunionn : 

THE 

ANNUAL SERMON, 



BEFORE THE 



BISHOPS, CLERGY, AND I.AITY, 



CONSTITUTING THE 



> 



BOARD OF MISSIONS 



PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH 



UNITED STATES 



DELIVERED IN 



TRINITY CHURCH, NEW HAVEN, 



ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 1839. S'~. 



BY REV. JOHN S. STONE,' D. D. 

■ t 

Rector of St. Faul's Church, Boston. 



NEW-YORK: 

PRINTED BY WILLIAM OSBORN 

88 William-street. 



MDCCC XXXIX. 



<L, 






*l» 



*' 



PREFATORY NOTE 



In the delivery of the following Sermon, several para- 
graphs were omitted on account of its more than ordinary 
length ; and, in preparing it for the press, a few short sen- 
tences have been added, while a few others have been 
slightly modified ; without, however, substantially affecting 
the sense of what was delivered. The body of the Ser- 
mon is presented without alteration. 

The view taken of the subject is not, perhaps, a very 
common one ; and it may be thought that the writer has 
dwelt too exclusively on the evils of modern commerce. 
But, when it is considered that he includes, in the term 
commerce, the whole system of intercourse by trade between 
man and man, whether by land or by sea; and especially 
when it is remembered that his object led him to view ex- 
clusively one side of the subject, to show the direct evils, 
and not the indirect good, which may have resulted from 
the operations of modern commerce ; it is believed that no 
objection against the course pursued can, on this ground, 
be sustained. 



Should there be any points in the Sermon, to which the 
reader is not prepared at once to assent, it is hoped he will 
find satisfactory illustrations in the notes, which have been 
added by way of Appendix. These notes might have easily 
been extended to the bulk of an ordinary volume. They 
have been made as few and as concise as the nature of the 
case seemed to admit. 

Boston, Aug. 24, 1839. 



SERMON 



ISAIAH lx. 9. 



FIRST, TO BRING THY SONS FROM FAR, THEIR SILVER AND THEIR GOLD 
WITH THEM, UNTO THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD, AND TO THE HOLY 
ONE OF ISRAEL, BECAUSE HE HATH GLORIFIED THEE." 

This is a passage in one of the most glowing of all the 
p rophetic descriptions of the ultimately universal spread of 
the Gospel through our world. It is from a prophesy, which 
foreshows, not only that every land shall be subjected to 
Christ, but also that " the abundance of the sea shall be con- 
verted unto him." In this great work of winning the world, 
commerce, it seems, is to take a conspicuous part. While 
"the isles" wait for Christ, " the ships of Tarshish" are to 
be "first" in bringing the sons of Zion from far, with their 
silver and their gold as an offering unto " the name of the 
Lord their God," and as consecrated means in the hands of 
Him, who hath steadfastly purposed to " glorify the house of 
his glory." 

Among all the means used in converting the human race 
to Christ, commerce, no doubt, is to be one of the most im- 
portant. Three fifths of the earth's surface are covered 
with waters: while the remaining fifths lie in the shape of 
two vast continents, and of innumerable isles, — the abodes 
of men, and the depositories of those treasures which God 
has given for the use of men. Between these, the great 
deep is a broad highway ; and commerce, with her ships, 
the only system of intercommunication. Without com- 
merce, neither science, nor art, neither civilization nor reli- 



gion, could spread beyond the boundaries of the land of 
their birth. All other agencies, not purely spiritual, are, 
when left to themselves, local. Commerce has the only 
created arm that can reach round the globe. 

This, then, is the grand agent, which God has prepared 
for himself, and which he purposes to use in the work of 
gathering in the nations to Christ, and in collecting the gold 
and the silver, the redundant means, which that work de- 
mands. The connection of commerce with the spread of 
the Gospel, is, therefore, a thought full of interest. To its 
development, so far as the nature of the occasion, and the 
special object in view will admit, I now invite your atten- 
tion. I restrict myself to the bearings of modern commerce 
on the progress of modern Missions; and, even in this 
view, shall find more than can be adequately surveyed in 
the short time allotted to our examination. 

I. By modern commerce, I mean that, which has over- 
spread the earth since the invention of the mariner's com- 
pass, and the consequent discovery, in 1492, of a new world ; 
as distinguished from that ancient commerce, which, having 
no trusty guide, crept only along the shores, and explored 
only the inlets and interior waters of the old continent. 
This modern commerce is now the mightiest body of human 
power, that can be found in action on our world. From an 
unskilled infant, with little or nothing of experience, it has 
grown to a colossal giant, as dexterous in its skill, as it is 
resistless in its power. In the discovery and application of 
steam, it has impressed into its service nearly all the agencies 
of nature ; and it wields them with all the certainty of sci- 
ence, and with all the efficiency of experience. With this 
subtle power it outstrips the wind upon the ocean, and 
almost copes in speed with the eagle on the land. With this 
viewless and resistless agent, it has opened the bowels of the 
earth, and penetrated the solitudes of the wilderness ; and, 
in the results of agriculture, manufactures and mining, has 
made ancient lands pay new tribute to the main, and new 
regions unlock their before hidden treasures to its grasp. 

I spread the definition of modern commerce over these 
operations on land ) not because the text has special reference 



to so broad a system, but because from the beginning, the 
system has been actuated by one spirit ; because the whole 
body of the great business world has but one soul ; and 
because commerce in her ships is but the grand carrier for 
commerce on her wheels. 

This, then, is the commerce of which I speak ; that which 
has been growing up in the world for the last 350 years. It 
is this, the bearings of which on modern missions we are 
now to examine ; on modern missions as distinguished from 
ancient : as springing up at the same time, and operating 
through the same period, with that commerce, by which they 
have been affected. 

This commerce, the word of God justifies us in believing, 
is at least a part of that, which is to be instrumental in the 
divine work of evangelizing mankind, in bringing all her 
sons into the Church of Christ, and in furnishing for the 
Lord the silver and the gold, the mere human means, which 
his enterprise of mercy requires. Has this commerce thus 
far done the work, for which it has been raised up ? Has it 
yet been God's handmaid in gathering the nations to Christ, 
or in carrying to them that Gospel of salvation, which 
teaches man to love the Lord his God with all his heart, and 
his neighbor as himself; to recompense to no man evil for 
evil, but rather to overcome evil with good ; that Gospel, 
which is truth, and justice, and temperance — which is 
purity, and love, and peace, and which is intended to make 
earth like heaven, and man like God ? Has commerce yet 
taken her destined part in doing this her destined work ? 
For an answer, let us take as brief a survey as possible of 
her doings. 

II. I begin by premising one thing. It is undoubtedly 
true that modern commerce has been the occasion of a great 
extension of the arts of civilization, and of the blessings of 
true religion. Within the last half century especially, her 
ships have wafted the true missionary of the Cross with the 
true Gospel of Christ, and with the elements of true Chris- 
tian civilization, to almost every part of the earth. And in 
almost numberless ways, through the channels, which she 



has opened, almost numberless blessings have been spread 
over the world. Walls of separation have been broken 
down ; nations have been brought closer together ; and the 
bonds of one universal brotherhood have begun to be woven 
around the one great family of man. But, then, all this has 
been but an incident to the system, not its main object, nor 
yet its main result. It has not grown out of the spirit and 
tendency of commerce, but has come to pass in spite of that 
spirit and tendency. Commerce has spread these blessings, 
just as war has spread them. The object of war is not to 
civilize and christianize, but to conquer and subdue. But, 
then, in its shock, refined nations sometimes mix with barba- 
rous ; and thus, even though in letters of blood, teach them 
lessons of a thousand things, which before they knew not. 
So it has been with commerce. The -blessings, which she 
has carried, were not in her heart. They only followed 
unbidden in her train. They went, not by her, but with 
her, and often in spite of her. While^ therefore, we must 
not be unmindful of the good, of which she has been the 
occasion, this good must not be suffered to blind us to her 
real character, and to her own proper works. To proceed, 
then, in our proposed examination. 

Unfortunately, modern commerce awoke at a time when 
Christianity had been sleeping for a thousand years in the 
growing, thickening darkness of a spiritual night ; a night, 
which, as usual, grew darker and darker till the very break 
of day. Amongst the monstrous things engendered in that 
night of darkness, was the grand usurpation of the papacy, 
by which it arrogated to itself the prerogative of Almighty 
God. " The Pope," to use the language of the historian 
Robertson, " as the vicar and representative of Jesus Christ, 
was supposed to have a right of dominion over all the king- 
doms of the earth." Nor was this an unexercised right. 
For, immediately after the discovery of the new world, a 
mere " Italian priest boldly presumed to give away God's 
earth, as if he sate God's acknowledged vice-gerent. Split- 
ting this mighty planet into two imaginary halves, he handed 
one to the Spanish, and the other to the Portuguese 



monarch ;"* thus pretending to convey to each a right to all 
the countries within their assigned limits, which they might 
discover, not already occupied by any Christian nation. 
And who were the people to whom this monstrous grant 
was made ? A part of the millions of that old world which 
for thousands of years had been growing more and more 
dense in population, more and more dense in superstition, 
more and more dense in the vices and diseases of old and 
corrupt institutions. Lust of power, and lust of gold, hav- 
ing fed to fatness on the men and the wealth of Europe and 
of Asia, stood eager for new victims and new gratification, 
when this great western world was thrown open by the hand 
of discovery to the knowledge of mankind. And what was 
the character of this freshly discovered world ? It was a 
a paradise, swarming with untold millions of simple inha- 
bitants, beautiful, confiding and noble in their simplicity. It 
was a vast storehouse, full of the natural wealth of silver 
and gold, and of the natural beauties and luxuries of a most 
bountiful soil. 

1. Awakening at such a period, in view of such a prize, 
and with such a training at home, modern commerce became 
in her very first movements, and has ever since continued, a 
colonizing spirit. Her ships have visited the new-discovered 
world, not to communicate, in exchange for honestly ac- 
quired wealth, knowledge and civilization, peace and love, 
but to pour in colonies of foreigners ; to take possession of 
whole countries in the name of an arrogant and distant 
usurper ; and, under pretence of planting the cross, and of 
spreading a religion, of which they knew nothing but the 
name, to grasp at the whole incalculable mass of the trea- 
sures of the richest portion of the earth. 

2. Under these circumstances, too, modern commerce soon 
became, and has ever since continued, a war-ivaging spirit. 
Having first, by cruel, exacting, and murderous measures, by 



* Howitt's Colonization and Christianity, p. 21 ; a work, to which the wri- 
ter acknowledges his obligation for much information on the subject of this 
discourse. 

2 



10 

deceit and treachery, roused the simple natives of the West 
Indies to resistance, it opened on them those baying mouths 
of death, its musketry and its cannon, and drove wars of 
extermination through their beautiful isles : wasting whole 
races before the deep-skilled prowess of tyrants, wearing the 
Christian name, and marching under the banner of the 
cross, the ensign of the Prince of peace ! 

3. Nor is this all. Under the influences which reigned over 
its origin, modern commerce speedily became, and has ever 
since continued, a slave-making spirit. The hitherto gentle 
and un worked natives, doomed to bleed in war, to toil in the 
mines, and to sweat in the sugar factories of Hispaniola, 
vanished like the morning dew. Then, in the womb of 
modern commerce, begotten by the lust of gold, was first 
conceived an idea, which has since been the parent of the 
deepest wrongs and miseries, which this earth has ever suf- 
fered — the idea of filling the places made vacant by the 
vanishing of one race, with slaves^ captured and dragged 
thither from another : the idea of making poor, sable Africa, 
the chained menial to do the work, and bear the frowns, and 
waste away under the reign of Christian avarice, indolence 
and tyranny. 

4. And would to God there were nothing further on this 
catalogue of ills. But there is. The system which thus 
began its work, went on to do it with unaltered mind. 
Modern commerce early became, and has ever since con- 
tinued, a corrupting spirit. What it could not wholly effect 
by treachery and war, exaction and oppression, it thoroughly 
accomplished by corruption. It corrupted the bodies and 
the minds of the once beautiful and healthy, the compara- 
tively pure and innocent aborigines of every land which it 
visited, by the systematic introduction and supply of intoxi- 
cating liquors, and by the reckless dissemination of the dark 
vices and deadly diseases of a misnamed civilization. In 
the former, it opened on them the burning waters of a river 
of death : and, in the latter, poured through the veins of 
both their bodies and their souls, the creeping poisons of a 
physical and a moral pestilence. Not content with deluging 
the most beautiful realms with those vices and diseases, 



11 

which are naturally communicated by the contact of depraved 
lust with unsuspecting innocence, it opened the very prisons 
and poor-houses of the old world, and vomited forth upon 
the new, colonies of the vile and the licentious, of the 
thieves and the assassins, with which the dark and cor- 
rupt bosom of so called Christian Europe teemed. 

5. What was thus begun by the Spaniards in the West 
Indies, has been continued by every commercial nation in 
every portion of the aboriginal and pagan world, through 
the movements of an essentially colonizing, war-waging, 
slave-making, and corrupting commerce, whetting into fury 
its deep lust of gold, at the sight of boundless treasures not 
its own, and, — under the delusive idea of spreading a Chris- 
tianity which it did not comprehend, and a civilization 
which it did not possess, — conquering, enslaving and wasting 
the fairest and the richest lands on earth. 

6. Moreover, what was thus begun by commerce under 
the direction of Papal governments, was continued by com- 
merce under the direction of Protestant governments. Re- 
formed in its doctrines, Christianity did not become reformed 
in its whole spirit. The effects of a thousand years of 
error and corruption, could, with comparative ease, be ex- 
punged from the creed of the Church. But they have lin- 
gered deeply and long in the hearts of men. The Papal 
doctrine that " the heathen were given to believers as a pos- 
session," became protestantized ; and the robber's principle, 
that " one outrage being committed, a second, or a series of 
outrages must be perpetrated to prevent punishment and 
secure the booty," has operated, if in a different way, yet 
quite as strongly, in the policy of the British East India 
Company, as it did in that of the Spanish conquest of 
Mexico.* So far as the system of commercial aggrandize- 
ment is concerned, irrespectively, of course, of many indi- 
viduals engaged in it, but one spirit has actuated the whole, 
from its conception to its present maturity, under Papal and 
under Protestant auspices ; and this spirit, in the words of a 
writer already quoted, has been " a fiery, rabid, quenchless 
lust of gold ;" a passion, which, while it lives at home, is 



* See note A, in the Appendix- 



12 

decently attired, and moderately restrained; but which, 
when it goes abroad, and stands in sight of the gold and the 
diamond mine, in sight of the rice-field, and the cane- 
brake, in sight of the spicery and every other product of a 
prodigal earth, strips itself to nakedness, and, in its uncovered 
deformity, breaks every bond by which mankind are united, 
and, with unchecked rapine and violence, deceives, robs, 
oppresses and murders, without remorse ; and all this while 
boasting of its civilization, and professing to bring to poor, 
benighted, barbarous heathen, a religion from heaven — the 
religion of the Gospel of peace and love, of truth and 
equity !* 

7. To give a history of all this would, of course, be im- 
possible within the limits" of a sermon. It would be to take 
you through the long horrors of those scenes, amidst which 
the Spaniards conquered, wasted and depopulated the beauti- 
ful West Indies, the mighty Empire of Mexico, the domi- 
nions of the mysterious Incas of golden Peru, and the fair 
fields of wide-spreading, silvery Paraguay : — of those scenes, 
amidst which the Portuguese wrought the same enormities 
throughout that land of the diamond mine, the broad Bra- 
zil, and on the rich isles and peninsulas of Eastern India ; 
of those scenes, amidst which the Protestant Dutch became 
successors in the East to the realms and to the spirit of their 
Portuguese predecessors, and enacted, with deepening barba- 
rity, the tragedy, which those predecessors had opened 
among the peaceful and gentle Hindoos; of those scenes, 
amidst which the commerce of Britain, humane, noble 
Christian Britain, introduced and carried forward its system 
of territorial acquisition in Bengal and throughout all Hin- 
dostan, in New-Holland, and through the myriad isles of 
the smiling Pacific, filling the most extensive and populous 
regions with some of the bloodiest and most devastating 
curses ever felt, poured out, too, by the hand of a people, who 
boast of being the most polished and christianized on earth ; 
of those scenes, amidst which the French run a shorter but 
scarcely less tragic race of competition with their commercial 

* See note B, in the Appendix. 



13 

rivals in Canada, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Madagascar, 
Mauritius, Guiana, some of the West India Islands, and parts 
of the East Indian and African Coasts ; of those scenes, 
amidst which the Dutch and their successors, the English, 
in South Africa, have proved themselves more barbarous an 
hundred fold, than the so called barbarian Hottentots, CafTres 
and Bushmen, whom they have hunted, murdered, and ex- 
terminated ; and finally, of those scenes nearer home, amidst 
which the combined and successive cruelties of the French, 
the English and the inhabitants of our own United States, 
have, for two hundred years, by treachery and the sword, by 
disseminated intemperance and disease, been weakening, 
wasting and blotting out the thousand tribes of one of the 
once finest races of men that God ever formed, — the aborigi- 
nes of our own North America ! 

Think not, respected auditors, that all this would be lead- 
ing you through scenes of imagination, the regions of mere 
poetry. Alas ! they are regions too seriously, too sadly real ; 
scenes, in which a sterner hand than that of imagination has 
been, and still is, doing its work ! Sober history has written 
bloody facts all over her wide page, as the chronicler of the 
movements of modern commerce. Were I to give you the 
particulars of what I have exhibited merely in outline, you 
would only wonder at the feebleness of the sketch, and per- 
haps be thankful that a weak hand has not been able to tor- 
ture you with a picture to the life, of what nations, professedly 
Christian, have been doing in the dark and distant realms of 
our world. It is sufficiently mournful to look over the page 
of ancient history, andreadthe acts of ancient heroes, conquer- 
ors, and enslavers of mankind ; the Pharaohs and the Nebu- 
chadnezzars, the Alexanders and the Ca3sars of the East ; — 
of their wars, their burnings, and their tortures ; of their 
vices, their crimes, and their nameless abominations ; — how 
they filled the earth with misery, and made mankind drunk 
with its bitter mixture ! But it is more mournful to look over 
that freshly written page, at which I have pointed. Modern 
commerce, during the 350 years of her reign, has furnished 
for herself the materials of a darker, bloodier history 
than that, which has been written of the tyrants of the 



14 

earth during the whole 4000 years of ante-christian bar- 
barism ! This commercial spirit has had a wider field 
on which to act, and more powerful enginery to put in ac- 
tion ; and she has filled her field to fulness, and moved her 
enginery to the utmost of its power. The ancients conquer- 
ed, but they did not exterminate ; they enslaved, but they 
did not corrupt ; they burned cities, but they did not annihi- 
late races. The finishing up of the extremes of wickedness, 
barbarity and pollution seems to have been left for nations 
calling themselves civilized, boasting of their humanity, and 
professing to spread, or at least to believe, the religion of the 
Cross, the Gospel of the Prince of peace ; — a religion of 
love and good-will, of truth and purity. 

To show that the agents of modern commerce have not, 
even yet, done working up the dark picture of their atroci- 
ties, I need only refer you, my hearers, to what has just been 
passing in. the East, in the efforts of British merchants to in- 
troduce and extend into all-populous China that awful curse, 
the opium trade. If missionaries, by the help of coasting- 
vessels, attempt to introduce into that vast empire the Word 
of life, men at home grow at once exceedingly conscien- 
tious, and cry out against the effort, as an interference with 
the religious institutions of the land. But they make no 
scruple in illicitly introducing there the drug of death, and 
that, in the face of the most solemnly proclaimed prohibi- 
tions of the emperor and his government. I do not suppose 
they would feel any special pleasure in murdering, outright, 
the three hundred millions of China ; yet, for the sake of 
abstracting the immense wealth of the country, they would 
not hesitate to do what is worse, to besot both their bodies 
and their souls with a poison, which, in its work of human 
destruction, has no compeer, save in that perhaps peerless 
agent of Satan, — Alcohol !* 

III. Let us now look at the effect of all this upon modern 
missions, upon the spread of the Gospel during the same 
350 years, which we have been surveying. 



* See note C, in the Appendix. 



15 

When Commerce, with her newly invented mariner's com- 
pass in her hand, went forth to the discovery of a new world, 
peopled with before unknown races of men, simple and 
guileless, generous and trusting; what a precious, what a 
glorious opportunity was presented for carrying to them the 
blessings of real civilization, of useful knowledge and of 
pure religion : and thus, for pouring the very soul of a hea- 
ven-descended Christianity into the minds, into the social 
state, and into the political and religious institutions of those, 
who looked up to the newly arrived with feelings of venera- 
tion, as to beings of a superior order ! How was this oppor- 
tunity improved ? By holding out, at first, a wooden cross, 
as the symbol of an unexplained Gospel, and calling on the 
wondering multitudes to bow down and worship ; and then, 
in their bowed-down posture, loading them with eveiy form 
and with every extreme of intolerable wrong. Instead of 
christianizing, the process exterminated. In the West In- 
dies, the whole native population became speedily extinct, 
the ten millions of that almost unearthly race, the gentle 
Charibs, vanished, like a morning mist before their oppress- 
ors. They bled in war ; they wasted away in the mines ; — 
they toiled to death in the sugar-mills ; they were torn in 
pieces by trained squadrons of ferocious dogs ; and they 
pined and died in the dens and caves, whither they had fled 
from the foot of their civilized persecutors ; until, at length, 
their native lands held not in life a single remaining trace of 
their once beautiful forms. They had disappeared from the 
earth ; and, as their spirits vanished, they went full of exe- 
crations upon the very name of that Christianity, which 
should have been the instrument of both their temporal and 
their eternal salvation. 

In Mexico and Peru, history records that the Spanish 
sword drank the blood of forty millions of their sons. 
The whole Indian race in Newfoundland is extinct. Entire 
tribes in South Africa, and in North America, are no more. 
While, in numerous lands and islands, great races of abori- 
ginal and pagan men are wasting away to weakness and 
nothingness before the relentless approach of a power bear- 
ing the ensign of life, but doing the work of death ! 



16 

And even where this power has not exterminated, it has 
wrought evils of a perhaps darker character. It has 
actually rendered the living savage more savage, and the 
living heathen more heathen* than ever. It has made, not 
Christianity, for of this little or nothing has been carried by 
the agents of this power — but the name of Christianity, an 
oifence and a loathing to the whole pagan world. Through 
all the realms of heathenism, it has made that name syno- 
nymous with hypocrisy and deceit, cunning and fraud, 
oppression and cruelty, avarice and extortion, pollution and 
crime. In this state of things, let the true missionary of 
the cross approach, and offer the genuine religion of the Gos- 
pel as a light from heaven, and as the only means of purity 
and of salvation to benighted man ; and with what answer 
is he met ? "Go home and convert your own countrymen ; 
cleanse your own seamen ; regenerate the agents of your 
death-dealing commerce, and thus show that your religion 
is the boasted blessing which you represent. Then come to 
us and we will listen to your instructions, and examine the 
claims of the Gospel which you bring." 

We hear often of failures in the foreign missionary work j 
of the treasures of benevolence lavished in vain, and of 
the lives of the benevolent thrown away for nought. And 
these things, when they happen, are trumpeted abroad with 
a note of triumph, as though there were, even here at home, 
a spirit which exulted in the failures, and stood gloating at 
the prospect of utter defeat to the movements of Christianity. 
But whence these failures % From the inadequacy of the 
means employed? From the misdirection of Christian 
effort ? From the indomitable character of savage and of 
pagan vices and superstitions 7 No, not from any one, or 
from all of these causes together. Proofs of this assertion 
will come in their proper place. But Christian missions 
fail, when they do fail, because they cannot penetrate where 
modern commerce has not been, because, as soon as the 
faithful missionary of the cross has begun to succeed in 



* See note D, in the Appendix. 



17 

turning the miserable heathen from his idols, and in cleans- 
ing; them from their pollutions, modern commerce, with its 
heart still lusting for gold, and fearful of losing its prey, 
rushes in, and, with its four great maces, war, slavery, in- 
temperance and disease, beats to the earth the work of 
heavenly benevolence, and knocks in head the new-born 
hopes of regenerated tribes ! 

A most remarkable instance of this interference is, at this 
moment, presented in the case of those numerous and beau- 
tiful islands in the Southern Pacific, which have been visited 
and blessed by the faithful missionaries of Christian England 
and America, and which maybe considered as, in an encour- 
aging sense, already civilized. These islands are spread in vari- 
ous directions from the great insular continent, New-Holland, 
the seat of that monster evil, the penal colony of the British 
government, its Botany Bay, the vile home of its trans- 
ported, convict felons. By this fatal neighborhood, and the 
mischievous commerce, of which it is the centre, all these 
triumphs of the Gospel amongst the islands are put in jeo- 
pardy. To use the language of a recent writer in England,* 
" All this springing civilization, this young Christianity, 
this scene of beauty and peace, are endangered. The foun- 
ders of a new and happier state, the pioneers and artificers 
of civilization, stand aghast at the ruin that threatens their 
labors, that threatens the welfare, nay, the very existence, of 
the simple islanders, amongst whom they have wrought 
such miracles of love and order. And whence arises this 
danger ? Whence comes this threatened ruin ?" ***** * 
" The savages of Europe, the most heartless and merciless 
race, that ever inhabited the earth — a race, for the range and 
continuance of its atrocities, without a parallel in this world, 
and, it may be safely believed, in any, other, are busy in the 
South Sea Islands. A roving clan of sailors and runaway 
convicts have revived, once more, the crimes and character 
of the old bucaniers. They go from island to island, diffu- 
sing gin, debauchery, loathsome diseases and murder, as 



* Howitt. 

3 



18 

freely as if they were the greatest blessings that Europe 
had to bestow. They are the restless and triumphant 
apostles of misery and destruction ; and such are their 
achievements, that it is declared, unless government inter- 
pose some check to their progress, they will as completely 
annihilate the islanders, as the Charibs were annihilated in 
the West Indies." * * * * « What a shocking thing is this ! 
that when Christianity has been professed in Europe for 
1800 years, it is from Europe that the most dreadful corrup- 
tion of morals, and the most dismal defiance of every sound 
principle come ! If Christianity, despised and counterfeited 
by its ancient professors, flies to some remote corner of the 
globe, and there unfolds to simple, admiring eyes, her bless- 
ings and her charms, out from Europe rush hordes of law- 
less savages to chase her thence, and level to the dust the 
dwellings, and the very being of her votaries." All this 
has been corroborated by sober investigation before members 
of that august body, the British Parliament. 

IY. But, let us turn to more cheering views. In this pic- 
ture of darkness, all is not dark. Facts and reasonings, full 
of light, remain to be exhibited ; and the Christian's spirit 
finds a blessed relief in passing out from what is so shock- 
ing to moral sentiment, and in giving itself up to the contem- 
plation of what is more congenial with christian hope. 

I remark, then, that, much as modern commerce has done 
to make the savage more savage, and the heathen more hea- 
then, to make the name of Christianity a loathing, and that 
of civilization synonymous with a curse, — all this may be 
undone, and the aborigines and the pagan still reconciled to 
the Gospel, if governments, merchant companies, and tra- 
ding men, will but learn justice, truth and mercy in their 
dealings, and leave unobstructed Christianity to do her own 
proper work. Even the dismal past holds an ample store of 
facts in proof of this position. 

While the Spaniards and Portuguese in Paraguay and 
Brazil were doing their dark work of conquest and of plun- 
der, the Jesuit missionaries introduced themselves among 
the natives ; and, though they carried with them a deeply 
corrupted Christianity, yet, carrying also, for once at least, 



19 

the true spirit of love, and peace, and simple confidence in 
God, they wrought wonders of mercy among the untaught 
children of the new world. The Jesuit became the Indian's 
friend. Multitudes flocked to their teaching; and their nu- 
merous reductions, or settlements, became, amidst the wide 
moral waste around, scenes of smiling peace and beauty ; 
blessed with the arts of life, and, so far as Christianity was 
understood, with the fruits of religion ; — scenes, which might 
have continued smiling to this day, had not the greedy colo- 
nists, hungering for gold, and reluctant to lose their prey, 
poured in upon them with murderous fury, broke up their 
settlements, scattered the works of the missionaries to the 
winds, and made the memory of them like the fragments of 
a beautiful, but cruelly broken dream ! 

What was the effect, in this country, when Roger Wil- 
liams and William Penn, on whom perhaps too much praise 
was not bestowed, when they were called two of " the most 
perfect christian statesmen that ever breathed," throwing 
themselves in simple faith on the providence of God, on the 
power of his Gospel, and on the truth and generosity of sa- 
vage hearts, went forward to the settlement of their colonies 
in the spirit of honest purchase, good faith and affectionate 
confidence? Did they meet with treachery, cruelty, incapa- 
city for civilization, and a stubborn rejection of the Gospel ? 
No. They were looked up to as godlike benefactors ; they 
conciliated the confidence and affection of the aborigines ; 
they won the fidelity of hearts, that never wavered from their 
faith ; and they put in movement that work of civilization 
and of conversion to Christianity, which, had it not been, as 
in all other cases, broken up by the cupidity, cruelty and 
faithlessness of neighbor colonists, professing their creed, 
but not exhibiting their spirit, would have left among us 
christianized and ennobled specimens of a now vanished 
race ; a race, with whom we should then have been proud 
to hold the alliances of refined and elevated life. 

What was the effect in South Africa, when, after Dutch 
and English barbarity had almost exterminated what we 
have been prone to consider the most degraded of human 
beings— the Hottentot race—a few of them, abandoning 



20 

their own country to their oppressors, were allowed to choose 
a new spot in the wilderness, and there, almost without 
agricultural implements, to try, under the direction of the 
faithful, sympathising Christian missionary, the experiment 
of taking care of themselves ; unaided, as they were, to fur- 
nish their families with sustenance, and to maintain their 
settlement against the incursions of the hostile savage from 
the wild ? What was the effect ? Why, in a few years' 
time, spent in digging roots with their fingers, fashioning 
rude implements of husbandry for themselves, and defend- 
ing their households with little more than the good right 
arms which God had given them, they became a compara- 
tively nourishing agricultural people, with schools, and a 
church, and temperance societies ; at peace and in love 
among themselves, respected and joined in alliance by the 
once hostile Caffre, rejoicing in the bright hopes of the Gos- 
pel, and presenting a specimen of our nature which put to 
shame the character of those European oppressors, whose 
tender mercies had merely suffered them thus to conquer 
for themselves a name and a place among men ! 

And what has been the effect of more recent missionaiy 
effort among the untutored and once cannibal natives of the 
South Sea Islands ? It has been almost to bring back the 
age of miracles ; and unless commerce, with her already 
begun trade in alcohol and disease, hatchets and murdering 
knives, should again succeed in arresting the triumphs of 
the Gospel, and in pouring darkness over the light of that 
new born Christianity, it will be to make those myriad isles 
smile as rejoicingly, under the full radiance of heavenly day, 
as they do amidst the beams of nature's sun, and the bounties 
of nature's God. 

But perhaps the most signal instance of the triumphs of 
the Gospel over all the obstacles which modern commerce 
has thrown in its way, has been exhibited among the Gri- 
quas of South Africa. These were a peculiar race, the 
offspring of European colonists and Hottentot women; 
driven as outcasts from their guilty progenitors, and left, 
unportioned, to a wild, wandering, marauding life, till they 
became really the most wretched and filthy of the human 



21 

race, " abandoned to witchcraft, drunkenness, licentiousness, 
and all the consequences which arise from the unchecked 
growth of such vices." But the missionary came. Patient and 
heavenly in his spirit, he followed them for five years in their 
wanderings, till, at length, they were " reduced to a settled 
and agricultural life ;." " brought to live in the most perfect 
harmony" with those whom they had delighted to murder, 
and enabled to engage in a profitable and improving traffic 
with the colonists. Well, then, might the author who records 
this, exclaim, " Let our profound statesmen, who go on from 
generation to generation, fighting and maintaining armies, 
* * * look at this, and see how infinitely simple men, with 
but one principle of action to guide them, — Christianity ', — 
outdo them in their own profession ! They are your mis- 
sionaries, after all the boast and pride of statesmanship, 
who have ever yet hit upon the only true and sound policy, 
even in a worldly point of view ; who, when profound 
statesmen have turned men into miserable and exasperated 
savages, are obliged to go and again turn them from savages 
to men ; who, when these wise. statesmen have spent their 
country's money by millions, and shed" their fellow crea- 
tures' " blood by oceans, and find only troubles and frontier 
wars, and frightful, fire-blackened deserts growing around, 
go, and by a smile and a shake of the hand restore peace, 
and replace these deserts with gardens and green fields, and 
hamlets of cheerful people." 

No, my hearers, Christian missions do not fail because 
the Gospel wants power to conquer, or because the mission- 
ary wants knowledge how to act, or because the pagan wants 
susceptibility to heavenly truth. These missions have often 
succeeded in spite of all the vices and corruption of a most 
degraded condition ; and, what is more, in spite of all the 
adverse influence which a destroying commerce has exerted 
in opposition to their movements. And if those who direct 
commerce, would leave Christianity unobstructed, to do her 
own proper work, if they would place truth, justice and 
mercy, at the basis of their system, these missions would 
generally succeed. The mistakes and indiscretions of here 
and there a movement, would hardly be felt amidst the 



22 

onward impulses and vigorous actings of all-conquering 
Christianity. The success of missions, under all past dis- 
couragements, is an hundred fold more than enough to 
justify all past expenditure, whether of money or of lives, 
and amply sufficient to sustain and encourage us under any 
future labors and sacrifices, which the work may require. 
The spirit of the Gospel, its spirit of love, peace and purity, 
is, when fairly presented, in action, as well as in word, 
alluring to the poor, unblessed savage and pagan. It is 
God's own power, fashioned for the very purpose of winning 
the hearts of his creatures. It is a calumny both upon Him, 
and upon the nature, which he has given them, to suppose 
that the Indian and the heathen have not the sympathies 
and the wants of men, and that they would not see and 
acknowledge the heavenly origin of the Gospel, if they 
could once behold it in all its beauty and power, in the lives, 
as well as in the words, of those, who call themselves Chris- 
tians. There are, it is true, in the condition of the heathen, 
obstacles to the spread of the Gospel almost inconceivable 
in their magnitude. Still, on examination, it will be found 
that the Gospel never has failed, and it may hence be infer- 
red that it never icill fail, in bringing the nations to Christ, 
except as its failure has been, or may be traced, directly or 
indirectly, to the shocking inconsistencies of those, who 
boast its privileges.* It spreads encouragingly even against 
these inconsistencies. What, then, will be its progress when 
this obstacle shall be removed 7 Triumphant. Give it un- 
obstructed way, or leave nothing but the obstacle of paganism 
itself, and it will be glorified. It will heave off from the 
whole unchristianized world the hatred and the scorn, which 
our past impurities, falsehoods and barbarities have excited, 
and make that world glad to receive the visits of love and 
of life from heaven, and from the ambassadors of heaven. 

V. Is, then, this glorious possibility never to exist, save in 
the baseless visions of Christian hope ? Not so, my hearers. 
Commerce has a different destiny before her, My text has 



* See note E } in the Appendix. 



23 

yet to receive, at least in great part, its fulfilment. The 
isles have long waited for God's law without fully receiving 
it ; and the ships of Tarshish have been long gathering 
the silver and the gold of the earth, but not largely, to 
the Lord. God has glorified his Zion in the conception of his 
purposes, but not yet in the full execution of those purposes. 
He has a work of wonder yet to perform before our eyes. 
This work is, to convert modern commerce ; to sanctify it 
for Himself, and to make it his own great and glorious in- 
strument in giving his law permanently to the isles, in 
gathering his sons to Christ from far distant realms, in bring- 
ing the silver and the gold to the Lord, and in thus effecting 
fully the divine purpose of glorifying his Church. 

And this work, christian brethren, loill be done. We may 
not doubt its accomplishment. Why has that great colossal 
system of commerce, which we have surveyed, been suffered 
to grow up and attain its present maturity ? In an age, when 
science with her discoveries, and art with her inventions, 
have brought almost all the powerful agents in nature into 
their service, and constructed machinery for working up 
nearly all the products of the earth, nay, the very crust of 
the earth itself, into some sort of fabric, or article for the use 
of man ; in such an age, why have we seen this vast system 
of commerce arise and stand up, — the grand carrier for the 
human race? Stimulated by a thirst for gain, men have 
long since learned to build floating bridges across the 
ocean ; and now they have learned to construct iron rivers 
across continents ; that they may, with mightily accelerated 
movements, gather the riches of all lands and of all seas ; 
and then, with keen intelligence of price current, distribute 
them through all channels and all markets. Commerce has 
thus become a Colossus, indeed ; her feet resting on broad con- 
tinent and on distant isle, her left hand holding a lighthouse 
for the world, and her right busy with all the moveable 
things of the earth. Why is this ? Why has God suffered 
such a power to arise? That it may always stand to scourge 
his creatures, and, to the end of time, scatter misery and ruin 
through the world ? Is it his purpose, that this power, 
moved by consummate skill, and sustained by ample means, 



24 

shall permanently amass the wealth of the earth into the 
coffers of a few, while it leaves the innumerable many poor, 
oppressed, broken in heart and hopeless of good? This 
were a solemn libel both on his wisdom and on his goodness. 
No. This grand system has before it another destiny. Raised 
up under the sublime energies of mighty man, — mighty 
though sinful,— like man himself it is to be converted to 
God. "The love of money" has heretofore been mainly 
serving itself. Hereafter it will be converted and made to 
serve the Lord. Science and art have got ready, with their 
implements, to distribute all the products of the earth to her 
ever multiplying millions. The ways of distribution have 
been opened across sea and land. And now,overthis whole 
body of agencies, God is to spread his own power, that it 
may do His own work, and scatter, — not curses, but bless- 
ings ; — not death, but life. It is a body of agencies, which, 
when sanctified, will be wonderfully fitted to do His work ; 
and that it is to be thus sanctified, furnishes the only expla- 
nation why it has been suffered to have origin and existence. 
VI. I go farther, brethren. This great work, the conver- 
sion to God of modern commerce, is now in progress ; and 
the eye of christian observation may easily discern and trace 
the steps, which it is taking. 

Why has modern commerce fallen mainly into the hands 
of two of the most Christian nations on earth ; of two na- 
tions, most active in support of Christian missions ; of two na- 
tions, which, in the irrepressibly enterprising and colonizing 
genius of their kindred races, command the world, and are 
fast spreading themselves over the world ; Great Britain and 
the United States? Why, but that God is beginning his 
work of converting this commerce to himself, and thus of 
bringing over the earth the brightest day of glory that ever 
shone ? Confirmatory of this view there are otiier consi- 
derations. 

The worst evils, which commerce, in her unsanctified 
state, has disseminated, are war, slavery, intemperance and 
disease. Why, then, just as this commerce has reached to 
something like its maturity, and accumulated a power capa- 
ble of moving the world, have we seen these two great Chris- 



25 

tian nations stirred and wrought up, internally, with deep, 
steadily growing and resistless efforts to disseminate the spi- 
rit and the principles of peace ; to wipe out the blot of slave- 
ry from the earth ; to quench the fires of all-devouring in- 
temperance : and to wash clean from their pollutions those 
hitherto despised and neglected circumnavigators of the 
world, — our seamen ? Had God designed the conversion 
of commerce, He could not, so far as we can perceive, have 
raised up a cluster of measures, more appropriate to His 
purpose than those, to the working of which, I have now 
pointed. What, then, must be our inference, when we see 
these measures really put in action, at the very time, and in 
the very places, where they are most needed ; when we see 
mighty instrumentalities, embodying the common sentiment 
of the wise and good, pointed, like heaven's artillery, against 
the thickest host of the evils, which modern commerce has 
bred, and pouring in upon that host a power, which is every 
year becoming more and more resistless ? What, but that 
God is actually doing his great work; that He is turning 
this commerce to himself, and preparing to make her His 
handmaid, in carrying the blessings of salvation to all man- 
kind ? 

Again ; England is, questionless, empress over the august 
realm of moral sentiment in this world. Why, then, in her 
Parliament, and among her people, has the strong spirit of in- 
vestigation started up, with an eye that looks through the 
very soul of commercial abuses, and with an arm that makes 
that whole system of abuses tremble? Why has the voice of 
that spirit summoned into his presence native princes from 
Africa, officers of government, and missionary agents, from 
the extremes of British colonization , and from them collect- 
ed facts, which have at length torn off the veil from the Mo- 
loch of commercial avarice and lust of power, and poured in 
a terrible light upon the dark and deep and wide-spread 
wretchedness, into which that Moloch has so long been 
treading the aboriginal and pagan nations of the earth ? 
WTiy, as the consequence, in the opening of the China trade, 
has an effort been made to cripple that mammoth monopoly, 
the East India Company, and thus to break the right arm of 



26 

that power, which has been crashing and debasing the hun- 
dred millions of British India ? Why, as a still further con- 
sequence, have we seen at least the shadowing forth of more 
humane counsels, in commercial and colonial policy, through- 
out British India, in South Africa, among the South Sea 
Islands, and wherever English colonies have been planted? 
And finally, why do we find, through the whole period, 
which has been witnessing these ameliorations, an increas- 
ing number of individual merchants, both in England and 
in the United States, unassociated with chartered companies 
and moved by the growing forces of Christian feeling in the 
world, among the noblest men that walk our earth— why do 
we find these men voluntarily espousing, in their commer- 
cial operations, the principles of Christian truth, justice, 
mercy and purity ; forswearing the gains of unholy traffic ; 
refusing to export death and corruption among the smiling 
paradises of the Pacific, and into those wide continental 
realms, within whose bosom God has hidden so much of the 
natural wealth of our planet ? Why have all these cheering 
facts been thrown upon our observation ? Is the spirit of 
investigation in the British Parliament, and among the Bri- 
tish people, to be again put to sleep ? Is the light, which 
that spirit has already elicited and thrown over the horrors 
of the past, to be once more darkened ? And is commerce 
thus to revert again to her unwatched, unopposed career of 
oppression, extortion, corruption and ruin ; and once more 
to walk securely forth upon her broad ways of death and 
desolation ? Never ! Opposition to the work of reformation 
will come in all its shapes, and with all its power ; commer- 
cial gold, and commercial intrigue, will exhaust their re- 
sources for the defeat of that work, and thus tedious delays* 
may be forced upon the cause of struggling, but reviving 
humanity. Yet all, at last, must prove in vain ! An eye 
has been awakened, which cannot be put to sleep. A light 
has been struck up, which can never be darkened. Com- 
merce, in the hands of Christian nations, can never go back 
and become what she has been. The awful discrepancy 

* See note F, in the Appendix. 



27 

between our Christian boasts and professions, and our un- 
christian practices and influences, has been made too appal- 
lingly apparent ever to be forgotten. Investigation will go 
forward ; light will increase ; the good effects of justice and 
mercy, peace and purity, as exhibited in particular cases, 
will become more and more apparent and influential ; the 
empire of corrected moral sentiment will spread from Eng- 
land over Christendom ; and, at length, the whole vast sys- 
tem of evil will be broken up ; the work of the Lord will 
be accomplished ; and commerce, converted, at last, to his 
purposes, will go forth over the world — the great, high- 
minister of His mercies to mankind ! 

VII. Look a moment, then, at the blessings of a sanctified 
commerce, even to the temporal lot of men. 

The system, as it has operated in the past, depopulates. 
After gathering up what it can of the gold and other wealth 
of the lands, which it has discovered, it leaves those lands a 
waste — peopled with a thin, imbruted and most miserable 
race ; and then, having taken their riches home to the 
bosoms of once noble nations in the old world, deposits 
them there to corrupt the heart, weaken the sinews, eat out 
the soul, and debase the whole spirit of those nations. Of 
this result, proofs are found wherever commerce has trod, 
whether in Asia, in Africa, or in America. The most con- 
spicuous of these proofs, however, may be seen by looking 
over the wide and once happy Pampas of South America, 
and over those degenerate nations of peninsular Europe, by 
whom that southern world was laid waste. 

But the system, as it will work in the future, when it shall 
have been regenerated, will ennoble and enrich whomsoever 
it affects. Elevating knowledge and heavenly religion, the 
sentiments of a pure and peaceful, a just and a loving Gos- 
pel, will be exchanged, as well as articles of traffic, for the 
surplus wealth of golden, or of spicy lands. The hundreds 
of millions of aboriginal and of pagan man, will be raised 
out of their scorn and ignorance of the Gospel, into its light 
and its love ; and, thus elevated, will take their stand among 
the regenerated tribes of the Lord's anointed king ; and the 
honestly acquired treasures, which shall have been gathered. 



28 

while they leave still smiling and flourishing realms behind, 
will go, not to canker in the heart, and corrupt the character 
of elder domains, not to lie heaped in the hands of a few, 
while the many pine in penury, but to circulate among all, 
enrich all, and minister to the moral and intellectual eleva- 
tion and improvement of all. Then the isles shall no longer 
wait in vain for God's law. The ships of Tarshish shall 
indeed bring his sons from far, their silver and their gold 
with them, unto the name of the Lord their God ; and the 
Holy One of Israel shall be seen fully glorifying the house 
of his glory, the Zion that he loves. 

VIII. This happy, this glorious period is coming upon 
the earth. Amidst the evil tidings, and the heaving convul- 
sions of our own days, we still live in the light, which 
marks, by no faint traces, the dawning of that period. 
Blessed be God we see its approach, and we labor amidst 
the influences, which are accelerating its movement. It 
becomes us, therefore, seriously to inquire what, in view of 
all these things, is the duty of nominally Christian countries, 
especially of the professed Church of Christ ? On this point, 
however, though amazingly important, I am admonished to 
be brief. 

What, then, is the state of the- whole case before us ? 
Simply this. Nominally Christian nations have, by the ini- 
quitous operations of their commercial system, plundered 
debased and wasted the aboriginal and heathen races of our 
earth. Multitudes of the lordly estates and the lordly mansions, 
which spread forth their beauties, and glitter in their orna- 
ments, on English soil, and under English skies, and vast 
amounts of the funds, which are continually coming over to 
this country from England and from Holland, for investment 
in our productive stocks and public works, are but parts of 
the immense wealth, which has been most unrighteously 
drawn from robbed, despoiled, depopulated India, and those 
numerous other lands, on which, for centuries past, modern 
commerce has been doing her dark deeds, till she has made 
their inhabitants loathe the very names of Christianity and 
civilization, as synonymous with all that is deceitful, impure 
and relentless. Such being the plain, unvarnished state of 



29 

facts, it is now but the simple dictate of common justice, 
that ice, the whole mass surnamed Christian, should repent 
of our works, cleanse our hearts from avarice and worldli- 
ness, take our unjustly acquired gold in our hands, go on 
our knees before the wronged and ruined heathen, confess 
to them our numberless and immeasurable sins ; and then, in 
our charities and labors above measure, give them a long 
and living example of the real justice, purity and love of 
that Gospel, which we have taught them to disbelieve and 
to scorn ; seek, by ages of self-humiliation and social equity, 
to efface the sense of those injuries, which we have inflicted, 
and thus carry them some small, though late remuneration, 
for the giant extortions, and the long-lived sufferings, in which 
those injuries have consisted. We have heaped on them the 
curses, we should now go and carry them the blessings, of 
civilization. 

In this great work of Christian repentance, and Christian 
justice, the Church should take a special part. Heretofore, 
colonization has been in the hands of the agents of com- 
merce. Hereafter the Church ought to colonize. Not 
merely in the person of here and there a self-devoted mis- 
sionary, but in whole hosts of her best blood and her best 
hearts, she should put herself into the ships, and gather the sil- 
ver and the gold, not to gratify the lusts of pleasure and 
of power, but to consecrate them to the service of the Lord; 
and should place, wherever the isles, or the continents, are 
waiting for the law, companies of Christ's faithful servants, 
to teach, by precept and by example, the living way to hap- 
piness and heaven. Even the Church has had, indirectly, 
her share in the treasures, which have been wrung from the 
poor heathen. The Church, therefore, should help to pay 
them back in something better than gold — in the treasures 
of life eternal. To effect this, she should be busy at home 
as well as abroad. She should labor and pray for the spread 
of temperance, that our land may be no longer a fountain, 
sending forth burning waters to consume the savage and the 
idolater. She should throw herself into the seaman's 
cause, that they may soon cease to carry disease* and death 

* See note G, in the Appendix. 



30 

into the lands which they visit. And she should make her- 
self heard, however silently, yet powerfully, in the ear of 
governments ; that they may become ashamed of the atroci- 
ties, which, for 350 years, they have been perpetrating ; and, 
in the counsels of true, universal peace and freedom, learn 
henceforth to deal justly and mercifully with mankind. 

The obligations of the Church to missionary labor — to be 
at one and at all times, and wherever a place for labor may 
be found, whether at home or abroad, a missionary body — 
these obligations I have ever deemed among the simplest 
deductions from the spirit and the principles of her faith, 
and from the bearings of the civilized on the uncivilized 
portions of our race. 

If Paul felt himself " a debtor both to the Greeks and to 
the barbarians," what, I pray, has the Church now become 
to the whole unchristianized world ? A debtor indeed ; 
involved in a debt, which she will never have done paying 
till the last of an unconverted race shall, under her leading, 
have come home to God. When we call on her members 
for their silver and their gold, ay, for their whole bodies 
and souls, we do not call on them for charity ; we call on 
them to aid in the payment of a simple debt ; a debt which 
we most righteously owe ; a debt, which, until it is paid, 
will leave us as a body under the burthens of uncleansed, 
unaneled guilt. The effect of Christian colonization has 
been to exterminate whole races of men : to put to the 
sword unnumbered millions of other races, and to set the 
whole surviving world of heathenism in just hate of the 
vast misnamed mass of Christian men. And now, unless 
the Church, which has had so large a share in these evils, 
or their gains, arise and give back to the mighty, injured 
tribes, a recompense in the true peace and blessings of the 
Gospel, how can God suffer her members to live on his 
earth 1 To me it seems that the particular Church, which 
will not engage in sending the Gospel to the heathen, has 
the doom of God's decree, written in the eternal records of 
his ways, against it, that it shall perish ! The denomination, 
which perse veringly holds back from this work of debt-pay- 
ing, must be cast out. It cannot live. Its very spirit, and 



31 

the measures, which that spirit dictates, will, even at home, 
shut it out from quickening, life-sustaining influences. It 
will die. It will become a reservoir for the refuse of a once 
covetous world ; and then, with that world, it will perish. 

Brethren, I have not time to refer, in conclusion, to the 
particular movements of our own denomination — to the 
extending missionary operations and prospects of this Zion 
of our affections. On this point, I can merely refer you to 
our current missionary publications. I cannot close, how- 
ever, without the addition of one further thought in connec- 
tion with the great topic, which has been reviewed. 

Probably, in the survey, through which the colonizing 
measures of the last three centuries have been made to pass ; 
the question has suggested itself to the attentive mind, how 
came the fearfully covetous, extortionate and oppressive 
spirit, which this survey has aimed to expose — how came it 
in the bosom of the Church of Christ ? Did he breathe it 
there ; or is his Gospel its parent ? No. It came from old, 
covetous, persecuting heathenism itself. Avarice is the 
natural growth of the human heart. But, avarice, coupled 
with so much of false philosophy, with so much of false 
morals in the maxims of trade, and with so much of inge- 
nious and relentless cruelty, as we have seen in action, 
though all, in one sense, the growth of our sinful nature, yet 
needed peculiar circumstances for the fostering of its growth. 
Those circumstances it did not find, under the Gospel, even 
during the reign of papal darkness. That is, the spirit did 
not originate in that reign. Popery received it from heathen- 
ism at the time when the latter, after having persecuted 
genuine Christianity into consideration and into prosperity, 
seemed disposed, under the auspices of the first Constantine, 
to turn and pour itself, en masse, into the Church ; and 
when, consequently, Christianity began to change into a kind 
of baptized paganism, and Christian doctrine to be mixed up 
with the falsehoods of pagan philosophy. Yes, the spirit 
which we have exposed came from the heart of ancient 
heathenism. It is the fruit of that old form of rebellion 
against God, which took its shape in the abominations of 
idolatry. Read the first chapter of Romans, and you will 



32 

find its pedigree. " Because men did not like to retain God 
in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate 
mind," and to all the awful consequences of their sin. For 
four thousand years, that reprobate mind, bowing down to 
idols in the offering of an unclean worship, possessed and 
ruled the bodies of men with almost undivided sway. 
When Christ came to dispossess it, it resisted in an awful 
struggle, during which, it almost wrested back from Messiah 
his early conquests. And even when he made a sort of second 
advent at the Protestant reformation, so strong was the hold, 
which this spirit of evil had upon men, that it was carried 
down even into the bosom of the Reformed Church. There 
it has ever since been at work. Shielded by its old code of 
false morals, and combining itself with the intense energies, 
begotten amidst the light of the reformation, and thus be- 
coming a mightier engine of mischief than ever, it has acted 
back, with tremendous effect, on the very seat of its ancient 
parentage, on the realms of old and wide-spread heathenism. 
Thus God has made pristine rebellion chastise itself; and, 
from our hands, most terrible has the chastisement proved. 
Heathenism, at first, sought to destroy true Christianity. At 
last, through the channel of a corrupt Christianity — a Chris- 
tianity which it had itself corrupted — it has almost literally 
destroyed itself ! 

And now what is to be the end of the matter ? This. 
God's purposes seem ripening into accomplishment. The 
system of horrors, which, under the auspices of commerce, 
has reigned since 1492, appears to be breaking up. The 
Christian world is waking to a view of the criminal part, 
which it has had in the guilt of a long series of centuries ; 
and the whole Church of Christ is doing, or preparing to 
do, her great work of repentance and of justice, before those 
whom she has wronged. This work, however slow at pre- 
sent, she will, by God's grace, carry on to completion. And 
then, as a sharp sickle, fitted for the hand of the Lord, she 
will sweep over the whitened field, reap the harvest of a 
willing world, and bring home great glory to that God of 
salvation, who alone doeth wondrous things. 



APPENDIX 



Note A. 



In adverting to the transition of commerce from trie direction of 
Papal to that of Protestant governments, the writer is, of course, 
aware of the fact, that Protestant colonists and commercial compa- 
nies have not generally been so open and direct in their wars and 
massacres and treacheries, for the destruction of the natives, as 
were their Papal predecessors. Still, even in these respects, Pro- 
testants will, in many instances, compare, with a melancholy truth, 
with Papists; while, in general, their cruelties have been, if more 
refined, not less oppressive, and have evinced all the unrelenting 
avarice, which, ever since a new world was discovered, seems to 
have raged in the great heart of commerce. 

In relation to the policy of the British East India Company, it is 
emphatically true that they have carried on their system of territo- 
rial acquisition, and the plunder of the wealth of the Indies, not by 
direct wars for conquest, and by open massacres for extermination 
but by stately negotiation and commercial craft. They have plun- 
dered under the forms of law j but then their plunder has been none 
the less ruinous to its victims; nor has it always been free from 
scenes of awful bloodshed. 

To show that I have not spoken too severely of the British East 
India Company, in this matter, I must beg leave to trouble the reader 
with a somewhat long extract. 

' ; What, then," inquires Howitt, in the work already quoted, " is 
this system of torture, by which the possessions of Indian princes 
have been wrung from them ? It is this : the skilful application of 
the process by which cunning men create debtors, and then force 
them at once to submit to their most exorbitant demands. From 
the moment that the English felt they had the power in India to 
cc divide and conquer," they adopted the plan of doing it rather by 
plausible manceuvres than by a bold avowal of their designs, and a 

5 



34 

more honest plea of the right of conquest — the ancient doctrine of 
the strong — which they began to perceive was not quite so much in 
esteem as formerly. Had they said at once, these Mohamedan 
princes are arbitrary, cruel and perfidious — we will depose them 
and assume the government ourselves — we pretend to no other 
authority for our act than our ability to do it, and no other excuse 
for our conduct than our determination to redress the evils of the 
people ; that would have been a candid behavior. It would have 
been so far in accordance with the ancient doctrine of nations, that 
little would have been thought of it ; and though as Christians we 
should not have applauded the "doing of evil that good might come 
of it;" yet, had the promised benefit to more than eighty millions 
of people followed, that glorious penance would have gone far, in 
the most scrupulous mind, to have justified the crime of usurpation. 
But the mischief has been, that while the exactions and extortions 
on the people have been continued, and in many cases exaggerated, 
the means of usurpation have been those glozing and hypocritical 
arts, which are more dangerous from their subtlety than naked vio- 
lence, and more detestable, because wearing the face, and using the 
language of friendship and justice. A fatal friendship, indeed, has 
that of the English been to all those princes that were allured by it. 
It has pulled them every one from their thrones, or has left them 
there, the contemptible puppets of a power that works its arbitrary 
will through them. But, friendship, or enmity, the result has been 
the same to them. If they resisted alliance with the encroaching 
English, they were soon charged with evil intentions, fallen upon 
and conquered; if they acquiesced in the proffered alliance, they 
soon became ensnared in those webs of diplomacy, from which they 
never escaped without the loss of all honor and hereditary domi- 
nion — of every thing, indeed, but the lot of prisoners, where they 
had been kings. The first step in the English friendship with the 
native princes, has generally been to assist them against their neigh- 
bors with troops, or to locate troops with them to protect them from 
aggression. For these services such enormous recompense was 
stipulated for, that the unwary princes, entrapped by their fears of 
their native foes, rather than of their pretended friends, soon found 
that they were utterly unable to discharge them. Dreadful exac- 
tions were made on their subjects, but in vain. Whole provinces, 
or the revenues of them, were soon obliged to be made over to their 
grasping friends ; but they did not suffice for their demands. In 
order to pay them their debts, or their interest, the princes were 
obliged to borrow large sums at an extravagant rate. These sums 
were eagerly advanced by the English in their private and individual 
capacities, and security again taken on lands or revenues. At every 
step the unhappy princes became more and more embarrassed, and 



35 

as the embarrassment increased, the claims of the company became 
proportionably pressing. In the technical phraseology of money 
lenders, " the screw was then turned," till there was no longer any 
enduring it. The unfortunate princes felt themselves, instead of 
being relieved by their artful friends, actually introduced by them, 
into 

" Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 
And rest can never dwell ; hope never comes 
That comes to all; but torture without end 
Still urges." 

To escape it, there became no alternative but to throw themselves 
entirely upon the mercy of their inexorable creditors, or to break 
out into armed resistance. In the one case, they found themselves 
speedily stripped of every vestige of their power — their revenues 
and management of their territories given over to these creditors, 
which still never were enough to liquidate their monstrous and 
growing demands ; so that the next proposition was, that they should 
entirely cede their territories and become pensioners on their usur- 
pers. In the other case, they were at once declared perfidious and 
swindling — no faith was to be kept with them — they were assaulted 
by the irresistible arms of their oppressors, and inevitably destroyed 
or deposed. 

If they sought aid from another state, that became a fortunate 
plea to attack that state too ; and the English were not contented to 
chastise the state thus aiding its ancient neighbor ; it was deemed 
quite sufficient ground to seize and subjugate it also. There was 
no province that was for a moment safe from this most convenient 
system of policy, which feared public opinion sufficiently to seek 
arguments to make a case before it, but resolved still to seize, by 
hook or by crook, all it coveted. It did not suffice that a province 
merely refused an alliance ; if the proper time was deemed to be 
arrived for its seizure, some plea of danger or suspicion was set up 
against it. It was called good policy not to wait for an attack, but 
to charge it with hostile designs ; though not a hostile indication 
was given, it was assailed with all the forces in the empire. Those 
princes, that were once subjected to the British power, or the Bri- 
tish friendship, were set up or pulled down, just as it suited their 
pleasure. If necessary, the most odious stigmas were fixed on them 
to get rid of them; they were declared weak, dissolute, or illegiti- 
mate. If a prince, or princess, was suspected of having wealth, 
some villanous scheme was hatched to plunder him or her of it. 
For more than a century this shocking system was in operation, 
every day growing more daring in its action, and more wide in its 
extent. Power both gave security, and augmented audacity ; for, 



i 



36 

every British subject who was not belonging to the company, and 
therefore interested in its operations, was rigidly excluded from 
the country, and none could, therefore, complain of the evil deeds 
that were done under the sun. It is almost incredible that so abo- 
minable an influence could be for a century exercised over a great 
realm, by British subjects, many of whom were, in all other respects, 
worthy and most honorable men ; and, what is more, that it could 
be sanctioned by the British Parliament, and admired by the British 
nation. But we have yet the proofs to adduce, and unfortunately 
they are only too abundant and conclusive." (Hoicitfs Coloniza- 
tion and Christianity, pp. 211 — 215, London ed. 1838.) 

We must here close the extract, because the cited proofs of the 
author's assertions would too greatly swell our already extended 
note. Suffice it to say, that they expose a series of acts, which, for 
cupidity, perfidy, and even bloody cruelty, may well challenge 
comparison with the events of some of the worst days of Papal 
atrocity in South America. The miserable fate of Suraja Dowla, 
the Subadhar of Bengal; of his bribed and traitorous successor, 
Meer Jaffier Khan; of Meer Causim, son-in-law of the latter; of 
the Great Mogul himself; of the nabobs of Arcot and Oude ; of the 
Rajah of Benares ; of the noble hearted Rohillas, and their inte- 
resting country ; of those unfortunately wealthy females, " The 
Begums," at Lucknow; and of Tippoo Sultaun, son and successor 
to the terrible Hyder Ali; the fate of these, under the operations) 
among others, of Lord Clive, of the notorious Warren Hastings, 
and of the high-handed Marquis of Wellesley, demonstrated a capa- 
bility for skilful baseness, and for hard-hearted oppression, of which 
it wrings the soul of feeling to read. 

As the result of this long-continued system of robbery under the 
forms of law, and sometimes without the forms of law, the British 
East India Company became successively masters, or, in some way, 
dictators of Bengal, of Arcot, of Delhi, of Oude, of Mysore, of 
Travancore, of Benares, of Tanjore, of the country of the Mahrat- 
tas, and finally of the whole vast Indian Peninsula; seldom touch- 
ing the people themselves with a direct hand, yet indirectly grind- 
ing them to the earth by the merciless exactions upon them, to 
which they diplomatically forced the puppet rulers of the people ! 



Note B. 



Here, also, the writer is aware of the fact, that while the Papists 
professed to colonize for the sake of spreading Christianity, carry- 
ing the cross in one hand, and the sword in the other, pretending to 



37 

seek the conversion of the natives, but in reality seeking only their 
gold and their silver, their diamonds and their spicery; Protestants 
never made any such professions, never pretended to colonize for 
the sake of spreading the Gospel, but went simply as commercial 
bodies, for the purposes of ordinary traffic, and of territorial acqui- 
sition. This, however, affects not the argument of the discourse. 
If Protestant governments and companies did not colonize avowedly 
for the spread of the Gospel, still they colonized as professedly 
Christian governments and companies. Their ships and agents 
went from known Christian lands ; and they became, in the presence 
of the heathen and the aborigines, the principal representatives of 
Christianity and of the spirit, which this religion was supposed to 
cherish. Their covetous and wicked practices, therefore, had the 
same effect in prejudicing the natives against Christianity, and thus 
in obstructing the spread of the Gospel, as they would have had, if 
Protestants, like Papists, had colonized professedly as missionaries, 
or for the avowed purpose of converting the natives. For, those 
who were Protestant missionaries, were obliged to go side by side 
with commercial enterprises, and were thus forced to contend, in 
their endeavors to Christianize the heathen, with all the awful in- 
fluences of commercial unrighteousness, and the corruption, which 
it carried in its train. Wherever they went, they found the native 
mind preoccupied with prejudices against the religion, which they 
brought, and could seldom, without the greatest difficulty, obtain a 
candid hearing for their instructions. The simple natives, utterly 
ignorant of the power of real Christianity to change the heart, and 
utterly incapable of appreciating the real difference between the 
missionaries and the agents of commerce, could always point, with 
such logic as nature taught them, to the miseries and extortions 
under which they were borne down to the earth, and say; "If these 
are the effects of your boasted religion from heaven, we want it not. 
That, which we already have, teaches a better morality, and has, 
therefore, for us, the superior claim." They said it, and ages only 
of living demonstration could prove the fallacy of their reasoning. 



Note C. 



Hear what a recent missionary traveller in the East says of the 
opium trade. 

H The greatest blot on foreigners at Canton, though not on all, is 
the opium trade. That men of correct moral sensibilities, and en- 
lightened minds, should be so blinded by custom, or desire of gain, 



38 

as to engage in this business, is amazing. A smuggler in Canton 
is no more honorable than a smuggler on any other coast; in some 
respects less so. There is less chivalry, hardihood, fatigue, expo- 
sure and inducement, than in the case of a poor man, who braves 
both the war of elements and legal penalty, to obtain subsistence for 
his family. Here, among a peaceable, and perhaps timid people, 
they incur no personal hazards, and set at defiance edicts and officers. 
No other smuggling introduces an article so deadly and demoralizing. 
The victims of it meet the smuggler's eyes, and are among the 
patients resorting to the hospital he helps to support. So well do 
they know the moral and physical effects of opium, that not one of 
them ventures on the habit of using it himself. 

" In this, as in other cases, magnitude gives dignity and sanction to 
the operation. No other smuggling is on so grand a scale. The 
annual sale amounts to a sum equal to the entire revenue of the 
United States, and to the whole value of teas exported to England 
and America! At this very time, though efforts so extraordinary 
and persevering have been put forth by the Chinese government, to 
stop this infernal traffic, there are twenty-four opium ships on the 
coast. We have little reason to wonder at the reluctance of China 
to extend her intercourse with foreigners. Nearly the whole of 
such intercourse brings upon her, pestilence, poverty, crime and dis- 
turbance. 

" No person can describe the horrors of the opium trade. The 
drug is produced by compulsion, accompanied with miseries to the 
cultivators as great as slaves endure in any part of the earth. The 
prices paid to the producer scarcely sustain life, and are many per 
cent, less than the article produces in China. The whole process 
of carrying and vending is an enormous infringement of the laws 
of nations, and such as would immediately produce a declaration of 
war by any European power — the grandest and grossest smuggling 
trade on the globe! The influence of the drug on China is more 
awful and extensive than that of rum in any country, and worse to 
its victims than any outward slavery. That the government of Bri- 
tish India should be the prime abettors of this abominable traffic, is 
one of the grand wonders of the nineteenth century. The proud 
escutcheon of the nation, which declaims against the slave trade, is 
thus made to wear a blot broader and darker than any other in the 
Christian world." (Malcolni's Travels^ vol. II. pp. 159, 160.) 

And yet, hear with what coolness commercial men can speculate 
on the probable effects of the threatened stoppage of this trade. 
The following is from a recent number of the New- York Journal of 
Commerce: 

" Trade with China. — The last advices from Canton justify the 



39 

belief that the importation of opium into that country is nearly at 
an end. As friends to human happiness, we cannot but rejoice at 
the prospect of such a result. For there is reason to believe, that 
the whole family of intoxicating liquors, in the worst days of their 
prevalence in this country, never produced so extensive and disas- 
trous effects, even in proportion to the population, as the use of 
opium has done in China. 

" But, looking at the subject merely as commercial men, we are 
bound to say, that the exclusion of ' black mud' from China is a 
misfortune. If the government of that country should be able to 
enforce its edicts, which prohibit the importation of the drug, it will 
create disaster and ruin in British India ; and not only so, but will 
revolutionize our own trade with the Celestial Empire. For a number 
of years past, most of our Canton ships have made their voyages 
direct, carrying out, perhaps, some domestic goods and other com- 
modities, but relying mainly, and always as a last resort, upon bills 
of Exchange on England, for the purchase of their homeward car- 
goes. These bills of exchange were chiefly the product of opium. 
From 1830 to 1833 inclusive, the average value of opium exported 
from British India to China, was $12, 000,000 per annum; and we 
presume it has since increased rather than diminished. In the same 
years the average exports of cotton from India to China, amounted 
to only about $5,000,000 per annum. These two articles constituted 
nearly the whole exports. The average annual imports into China 
during this period, from all parts of the British empire, were about 
$21,500,000; of which, as stated above, $12,000,000 consisted of 
opium. 

" Supposing the ratio to have continued the same since 1833, it is 
obvious, that in case of the suppression of the opium trade, a great 
amount of specie must be sent to China from some quarter, as in 
former years. The wants of China for foreign commodities, except 
opium, do not equal, by several millions per annum, the wants of 
the rest of the world for the teas, silks, &c. of China. The difference 
must be supplied in specie. This will cause the American trade 
with that country to revert more into its former channels. Instead 
of a direct trade, by means chiefly of bills on London, our ships 
will more of them go, in the first instance, to South America, Bata- 
via, Manilla, &c, and there exchange the cargoes, which they car- 
ried out from this country for specie, will take the latter to Canton 
and with it purchase the cargo which they seek. True, we send a 
few domestic cottons to Canton, but they amounted last year to only 
$532,697, and our whole exports to China were only $1,698,433 ; 
while our imports were $4,764,536. Excess of imports over exports 
$3,066,103. This difference must have been made up of bills of 
exchange, or of specie, &c, obtained from other countries by what 



40 

is called the indirect trade. From the United States itself, very little 
specie has been shipped to China since 1827 ; the amount in no year 
equaling half a million dollars, except in 1835, when it reached 
§1,390,832. From 1821 to 1827 inclusive, the average was more 
than three and a half millions per annum. 

•• We have made the above statement, not for the information of 
persons engaged in the China trade, (for they must have already 
anticipated the effects of the exclusion of the opium from China, upon 
our intercourse with that country,) but for the sake of others, who 
may not be aware of the importance of the movement in a com- 
mercial, or even in a financial point of view. We do not imagine, 
however, that a great amount of specie will be exported to China 
from this country j it will chiefly come from other countries, by 
means of the indirect trade." 

We know not a case more strongly in point, as an illustration of 
the spirit of modern commerce, than that furnished in the above 
extract. As philanthropists, men can mourn over the blighting 
effects of a trade, which introduces among hundreds of millions of 
beings, poverty, disease, misery, moral debasement and death. And 
yet, as members of a board of directors, sitting in the Chamber of 
Commerce, they can coolly pronounce the stoppage of that trade a 
misfortune ! The opium trade must not be stopped, because it 
would derange the commercial system of exchanges, forcing mer- 
chants to pay for their teas in gold and silver, instead of bills of ex- 
change, procured by the sale of opium. The continuance of the 
opium trade is worse in its effects than wholesale murder to the 
three hundred millions of China; yet it must be continued, because 
its stoppage would reduce to poverty a few rich men in England 
and America, or at least compel them to make longer voyages, and 
wait for slower returns, in their swelling commercial gains! 

Such has ever been the spirit of modern commerce. It has no 
soul but the love of money; and for the sake of this, can coolly fat- 
ten on the wretchedness and the ruin of an uncivilized, or a half- 
civilized world. 

The trade in opium is now threatened with annihilation. But, if 
commercial gold and commercial artifice do not yet prove an over- 
match for an awakened and indignant government, weeping over 
the deep miseries of its subjects, it will be the first time that they 
have ever proved too powerless for their aim. 



Note D. 



Never were the savages of this country so savage as at this mo- 
ment, if we may consider moral debasement and insusceptibility to 



41 

the influences of the Gospel, as proofs of savagism. The iniquitous 
commerce of our government and trading companies with the abo- 
riginal tribes of this continent, would, were not the spirit of Chris- 
tianity exhaustless in its perseverance and the versatility of its 
power for good, speedily renew the scenes of the West Indies and of 
South America, by either exterminating the native race, or render- 
ing them incapable of elevation by even the genial influence of 
the Gospel. 

As to the heathen of the eastern world, the British East India 
Company have, for years, been supporting a system, which dis- 
courages Christianity, and favors both Mohamedanism and idolatry. 
Under this system, the worship of old, and almost forgotten tem- 
ples has been revived, and their disgusting and filthy superstitions 
made to flourish again ; while Christian soldiers have been compel- 
led, though against their consciences, to fire honors over the abomi- 
nations, and Christian revenues been lavished on the ornaments of 
idols, and in supporting the prostitutes of their temples! 

" It is notorious," says the Appendix to the celebrated Madras 
Memorial against the connexion of the East India Company's 
government with the idolatries of India, " that, at this hour, the 
pagodas and their idolatrous rites are, under British rule, officially 
superintended with an efficiency and care, descending to minute 
particulars, which they never received even under the Hindoo 
government." 

The pamphlet in which this extract is contained, was printed in 
London, 1838, by a late resident in India, and is composed mostly 
of official documents, proving, beyond a question, the connexion of 
the East India Company's government with the idolatrous and 
superstitious customs and rites of the natives of India; and a more 
revolting disclosure was never made of the meanness of commercial 
avarice, and want of all conscience and all principle, in bowing the 
soul to wickedness through a love of gain. The late measures of 
the company are a virtual forcing of Christianity into the worship 
of idols, for the sake of money ; and were it not that the memo- 
rialists against this awful sacrilege have a Christian world, and the 
Christian's God, before whom they may lay their case and hope to 
be heard, we might soon see the greatest power under any Christian 
government, decreeing that idolatry within its realms shall be per- 
petual, and that its foul incense shall be kept smoking by Christian 
revenues. 



Note E. 



Crawford, " a distinguished British writer," as quoted by Malcom, 
in his late travels in India, says, " that with the exception of the 

6 



42 

obstacles, which the impolicy of Europeans themselves has cre- 
ated against the propagation of their religion, there exist no 
others." " In every country of the East, Christianity has been 
introduced to the people along with the invariable and odious asso- 
ciates of unprincipled ambition and commercial rapacity." (Craw- 
fords Indian Archipelago, Vol. II. Book 6. Chap. 4.) " Hence," says 
Malcolm, " their expulsion from Japan, China, Tonquin, Cochin- 
China, and Camboja, and the precarious footing of missionaries in 
Siam, Burmah and other places." Mr. M. adds the following from 
La Loubier, Du Royaume de Siam, torn. 1 : "It must be confessed 
that, if the beauty of Christianity has not convinced Orientals, it is 
principally by reason of the bad opinion, which the avarice, treach- 
ery, invasions and tyranny of the Portuguese and some other Chris- 
tians in the Indies, have implanted in them." He might have added ; 
This bad opinion, implanted by the barbarities of the Papal Portu- 
guese, has been fostered and fixed by the equal barbarities of their 
Protestant Dutch successors, and is still perpetuated by the no less 
censurable conduct of the British themselves; the great, unchanged, 
and, as to magnitude, solitary mountain barrier against what would 
otherwise have proved the rapid conquests of a life-giving Gospel. 



Note F. 



For an illustration of these " delays," see the pamphlet, before 
referred to, by a resident in India, demonstrating the connexion of 
the East India Company's government with the idolatries of India. 
This pamphlet is rare in this country. The writer is indebted for 
it, to the kindness of a valued friend and laymen in the Church, 
who has also been a resident in India, and to whom he is glad to 
acknowledge himself indebted for some valuable criticisms on the 
foregoing discourse. The Court of Directors of the East India Com- 
pany, in 1833, forwarded from England a despatch to their Gover- 
nor General at Calcutta, ordering the discontinuance of the whole 
system of governmental connexion with idolatry. And yet that 
Governor General, in council, has found means not only to delay the 
execution of that order, but even to procure a virtual counter order, 
by which the whole system of abominations is continued, to the 
burning grief of many Christian hearts, and to the burning disgrace 
of the British name. Under this system, Christian officers of govern- 
ment are forced, either to do honor to a foul idolatry, or to resign 
their places, and ruin their prospects for life. The connexion against 
which they protest, however, is too adulterous in the sight of God 



43 

to last long. Christian Britain is indignant at its continuance, and 
heathen Britain must, ere long, return to her fidelity to the Cross. 



Note G. 



On the subject of the diseases introduced by modern commerce 
among the aboriginal population of the earth, much might be said. 
One of these diseases is that awful scourge, the small-pox, which 
has already, since the first landing of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, 
swept off whole tribes of the natives of this great continent. But, 
dreadful as these ravages have been, they are mild, compared with 
those which have been committed by another disease. The first 
number of the Hawiian Spectator contains an article on " The de- 
crease of Population" in the islands of the Pacific, in which the 
writer shows that the population of the Sandwich Islands alone, has 
dwindled, in the space of sixty years, from 400,000 to 110,000; and 
that this astonishing decrease has been effected by two great causes, 
alcohol and licentiousness. This writer also remarks, that " the 
countless aboriginal tribes of North and South America, the whole 
central and Southern Africa, the hordes of Northern Asia, the 
islanders of the Indian Ocean, and of the Indian Archipelago, and 
the unknown myriads of New-Holland, are all involved, more or 
less, in this question;" the question, viz. "What are the causes of the 
depopulation of the Sandwich Islands?" 

After noticing various causes, which had retarded the growth of 
population in those islands, and showing that, though they retarded 
that growth, yet they did not diminish the population itself; he 
adduces, as the real causes of the diminution, the two above specified. 
The following is what he says of the latter : 

" But alcohol, fatal as have been its effects, has acted but a subor- 
dinate part in the work of death. It has murdered its thousands, 
indeed, but licentiousness has slain its hundreds of thousands. 
These islands, like others in the Pacific, were inhabited, at the time 
of their discovery, by a people of loose and licentious manners, but 
free from disease. This trait in their character formed the maga- 
zine of combustibles, to which the match only needed to be applied, 
and the conflagration followed. But, to speak without a figure, 
their previous looseness of morals formed a ready conductor for 
the disease, which was introduced by the first ship that touched 
there ; and, from the account given by the natives themselves, the 
consequences were incalculably more dreadful than had been feared 
by Captain Cook and his associates. The deadly virus had a wide 
and rapid circulation throughout the blood, the bones and the 



44 



sinews of the whole nation; and left, in its course, a train of 
wretchedness and misery, which the very pen blushes to record. In 
the lapse of a few years, a dreadful mortality, heightened, if not 
induced, by their unholy intercourse, swept away one half of 
the population, leaving the dead unburied, for want of those who 
were able to perform the rites of sepulture." (Hawiian Spectator, 
No. I. p. 61.) 






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